A racing pulse, a fresh heartbeat, a new movement... for the future of Nigeria
This is the Afro Beat.

Monday, February 5, 2007

The Afro Beat

The Afro Beat is a new movement, a fresh heartbeat, a racing pulse.

It is a club/ forum/ virtual gathering place for individuals of Nigerian heritage or association, who share the collective ambition to see their country move forward.

The Afro Beat is centered on the following:

The mutual and collective enlightenment of ourselves by discussion of our country’s plight,

The development of a sense of accountability to one’s peers,

The implementation of a series of realistic projects for the benefit of every Nigerian, and

The ultimate objective of improving the situation in Nigeria, one step at a time, and one day at a time.

How The Afro Beat will be kept going:

This idea was birthed by Misan and Tokini, but it is not “our” club alone. We’re offering ourselves up as mere facilitators. We desire the contribution of everyone who wants to learn more about their country, its past, and most importantly, about effective methods to contribute to its future. We’ve noticed a growing interest amongst our peers, in the injustices currently plaguing Nigeria, and simply wanted to provide a way for us to group together to share ideas on how to move the nation forward, and to have fun at the same time.

We intend to start with the simplest things.

First, we’ll begin by publishing articles on this blog, written by Nigerians and others, about Nigeria, that we hope you’ll be interested in. We’ll also publish articles by The Afro Beat’s members, to provoke discussion and commentary. We’re open to receiving anything you find on the world wide web or elsewhere, or that you yourself write, that you want to share with The Afro Beat’s members, and which you feel will be for their benefit. We hope to provide a worthwhile learning experience for us all, about our country.

We’ll also be opening up discussion about the projects we would like The Afro Beat to be known for. We have several exciting ideas which we hope you’ll see potential in, and which we know would benefit immensely from your contribution and participation.

Our address is: info@theafrobeat.com

“Every sector of society has been left to fend for itself” - an observation about Nigeria by the Vanity Fair columnist, Sebastian Junger, in his article on the Niger-Delta entitled “Blood Oil”.

If The Afro Beat works as we hope it will, no journalist will ever be able to make such a sweeping statement about Nigeria again.

This is a GREAT idea. However, I always feel guilty complaining and arguing about the Nigerian situation, and yet feeling very powerless at the same time as many issues seem too daunting to even begin to tackle. Hopefully, there will be a lot of constructive solutions offered by members in this forum that can actually be implemented. But I'm happy you guys put this together as I will be the first to shamefully admit that my knowledge of Nigerian history is very, um, limited and I'm excited (yes, I'm a dork!)about educating myself.

Hi Emine! Yaay you're here! Don't worry at all about how much you do/don't know. I got all fired up recently because I only just found out a whole load of things about Nigeria that tons of people had known for ages. Really hope you find all the stuff fun and useful at the same time. The issues definitely do seem daunting, but we're prepared to do something even if it improves the situation of only one Nigerian. At the end of the day, its better than nothing xxx

Hey Eminelly! Thanks for joining oh! The Afro Beat was born out of the same frustration of being tired of complaining and feeling too young to do sth. Till we woke up and realised that we were in our 20s, weren't going to get much more able-bodied and creative to do something than now. SO voila. this (with your help) will not be a come-and-vent forum (we can have that on the fone anytime you pls...hehe), it will be a place to feed our brains, equip ourselves with the knowledge and ideas we need to effect the change we so crave. I realized it's all well and good to want to do something, but you need to be educated on the issues you want to address, and this is that first step for us. The more we learn, the more we can do. So let the games begin...and as Seyi so nicely put it: the revolution WILL be televised (now, is that Common, Public Enemy, or does it date back to way before our time...i'm off to find out).

I am indeed very impressed you both have decided to start a revolution instead of bitching, I hope people are able to understand where you both are trying to take this, and how we can all work together to potray Nigeria in a brighter light!!

My name is John Wilpers. I am the Global Blog Coordinator for GlobalPost, a new international news organization set to launch on Jan. 12 (see www.globalpost.com).

My job is to build a list of blogs that will appear on GlobalPost where we will have approximately 65 correspondents in some 46 countries. We are looking for enlightening, informative posts from bloggers writing (in English) in those countries.

I am pleased to extend an invitation to you to have the most recent post of "The Afro Beat" included on the Nigeria page of GlobalPost.com as part of our “Global Blogs” service. (You may have received an earlier e-mail from one of my interns; this is a follow-up as we haven't heard from you and really wanted to include your RSS feed on GlobalPost!)

After reviewing thousands of blogs worldwide, we have found "The Afro Beat" to be one that is thought provoking and gives readers a true sense of what life is really like in Nigeria.

The way it would work if you accept our invitation is that we would use your RSS feed to place your most recent post on your personal page on GlobalPost.com. We would point back to your actual blog for comments and for archives, hopefully driving lots of traffic to your site. Each time you write a new post, it would replace the older one so only one post would appear on GlobalPost.com.

By appearing on Global Post’s exciting new international news website, your words, viewpoints, and pictures would gain worldwide exposure. Your posts would not only appear instantly on globalpost.com but also possibly on the sites of our partners, including the Huffington Post (7.8 million U.S. and 9.7 million global monthly unique visitors) and other news and information websites.

You don’t need to do anything differently. We do request that you consider pointing back to us from your blog (we will send out logos shortly for your consideration).

You should know that we have a few guidelines that we observe here at Global Post:

1) We do not publish racist, sexist, or misogynist comments (unless those comments are the subject of the post).2) We do not publish obscene language or photos. While we recognize that obscenity can be difficult to define, we know it when we see it and we will let you know if we think you have crossed our line.3) We do not permit plagiarism. Any work taken from another source must be attributed to that source.4) We do not publish libelous or slanderous language.5) We do not tolerate repeated errors of fact or misrepresentations of facts or quotes.6) We do not publish work inciting violence.

Failure to observe these guidelines would result in the removal of your blog from GlobalPost. We would contact you, of course, to discuss the post in question.

Because we have a broad multicultural audience holding every conceivable political and religious viewpoint, we want to respect their views while also possibly challenging them. We will host controversial work. We will encourage robust debate of the hottest topics. We will not stifle discussion, only abuse of people, belief systems, and laws.

About Us

The Afro Beat is a club/ forum/ virtual gathering place for individuals of Nigerian heritage or association, who (amongst other things) would like to do lotsa chatting and noise-making in the hopes of getting the sleeping giant to wake up!
Read more about us here